It was the Robertson Trust's 50th anniversary dinner on 30th September at the Barony Hall, in Glasgow. I was lucky enough to be involved. I worked with the participants to improve their public speaking. We used all of these hints and tips:

• Use the power of 3. Our brains are comfortable with things in 3's. There is less effort in moving them from our working memory to long term memory. Just think of all the children's stories you know with 3 characters!
• Use the word 'You' to allow people to develop their own story in their head. Do 'You' remember when...
• Smell the flowers to relax (see voice business)

Microphones on Posh Frocks, a Puff of Air and Stellar Ideas!

The key speakers at the Robertson Trust's celebratory event were from The Jeely Piece Nursery and Dundee Association for Mental Health (DAMH). In my training workshop as well as focusing on the content, structure and delivery of the presentations, we had to think about preparing the posh frocks for the event. We had to work out where on the outfits would we clip the microphones and battery packs on them. We agreed the best dress design had a bow at the waist. The microphone clipped on easily and didn't get in the way of BIG gestures. 

The 'Telling Stories' programme that I designed and delivered to the speakers enabled participants to input ideas and thinking from their organisation into the heads of the 250 people in the audience. They learned to do this by improving their listening skills and 'Appreciative Inquiry' to find out the organisation's stories. 

Mark Pagel, a biologist, spoke at the Edinburgh TED conference in July on 'How language transformed humanity'. If you click here you can see an example of the power of a puff of air!

And Stella of Stellar Learning provides some useful tips on constructing your powerful story in her newsletter article 'Psst! Would you like to hear a story?'

Five Million Books across the Centuries

Google Labs' NGram Viewer lets you search for ideas in five million books across centuries. I have not yet found a research use for this tool, but it is good fun. I put in 'Sheila' to find a big increase in 'Sheila' being mentioned in books in the 1860's. Why?

I then tried 'Appreciative Inquiry' to see the vast increase in it being mentioned in books in the year 2000 and I was using the methodology in 1997. So which technologies am I using now that are still to be used with books?

Unfortunately 'Sheila Fraser Associates' has not been mentioned in a book - yet. But my Boredom Busters training is there from 2003. Jean-Baptiste Michel has learnt a few interesting things from using the Ngram Viewer tool. Let me know if you learn anything interesting.

Magic Weavers - Scottish Learning Festival

I attended the 'Scottish Learning Festival' in September. This conference is more about Education than Learning. Sir John Jones was one of the keynote speakers. He was so engaging that the tweets from the room dramatically dropped after 20 minutes into his talk. He got a standing ovation from the audience of (mostly) teachers. So if you are in Education you will want to take 65 minutes to watch his presentation.

If you are looking for an engaging speaker - I recommend John Jones.

Invitation to Lunch